John Walker's Electronic House

A couple of people have pointed out to me that my emails to Sid Cordle have been less than ideal.

I believe that satire is a powerful and effective medium for causing debate and anger. And I do not regret using this. However, I do regret being a poor representative of Christianity, which I believe is the case when my position appears rooted in hate. So to address this, I’ve written back to Cordle, apologising, and restating my position in a more direct and less hostile manner. Here it is:

Hello.

I’d like to apologise for the tone of my previous emails.

As is probably clear, I am very angry about your campaign. Unfortunately, I let that anger direct my response, and was not Christ-like in my behaviour.

So I want to say sorry for my behaviour.

I believe my argument is very important, and I believe your campaign is rooted in prejudice and ultimately results in cruelty, so I want to restate my argument in a more helpful manner.

To pick on one sin from the New Testament, and make it the focus of your campaign, seems needless and hypocritical to me. All studies indicate that loving gay couples make excellent adopting parents, despite the situation being less than ideal. A mother and a father is the ideal circumstances for children to be raised, but as we are all well-aware, this ideal is not always possible.

The foster system is hell for children, orphanages are clearly dreadful ways to begin life, and far, far worse are abusive or neglectful homes. And I believe that your campaign prevents these children from reaching loving households, because they fall short of an arbitrary ideal.

I strongly believe that you cannot, as Christians, organise this campaign without willingly opening your homes to adopting children. I think that you *must* do this if you are willing to prevent others from adopting. If you are not willing to do this, I believe you must immediately step down from your campaign, as the results you aim for are so terrible: preventing children from being raised in loving homes.

Maintaining that your campaign is only an opt-out for parents who don’t want their children adopted by loving gay couples isn’t very fair. Your initial press release states,

“The initiative is being taken by the CPA after one of the party’s members, Sheffield magistrate Andrew McClintock, stood down from a family courts panel after he was refused permission to opt out of cases that could result in children being placed with same-sex parents. He had argued that the law extending homosexual rights were in conflict with his religious beliefs and his duty to put the welfare of the child first.”

Which makes it very clear that your larger aim is to prevent any gay couples from adopting.

There are so few parents willing to adopt, and so many children in desperate need of a loving home. I cannot imagine why anyone would wish to make this situation worse. You obviously believe that same sex couples, despite getting through the astonishingly rigorous adoption process, are not suitable parents for unwanted children. So therefore how can you not step up and organise a campaign for people to become adopting parents? Surely that is the Christ-like response in this situation?

Thank you,
John Walker